My musings on the New Testament, Early Christianity, Religion, Literature, and Other Phenomena and Ephemera.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Posting by David Ker at Lingamish about American Politico-Biblical Stupidity

I have seen references to this posting for a few days now and I finally got around to reading it. You can see the full post by David Ker at Lingamish.

It is scathing, and it is right on the money for the most part.

Here is a sample of his righteous ranting:

The dust has settled and the earnest sister who believed that Mike Huckabee would score a divine victory on Tuesday has now switched her sights to the book of Revelation and Obama’s landslide as definitive evidence of the beginnings of the Great Tribulation.

On our trip out to Wyoming I listened to the program on Crosstalk Radio where they allowed callers to tell who they were going to vote for and why. Almost every single one said, “I’m voting for McCain because I’m a Christian.” Well guess what, folks, I voted for Obama because I’m a Republican and a Christian. The most hilarious caller was a rabbi from New York who really let loose with one of the funniest fuselages of rhetorical afflatus that I’ve ever heard including the cry, “Onward Christian Soldiers!” and “in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice” (Gen. 21:12). So it’s not just Christians who can be stupid.

Then the announcer plays a “very interesting” eleven second recording in which Obama says, “My Muslim faith.” And the saints all nodded their heads and said, “See?”

My brethren, stop being so stupid. Stop forwarding half-cocked emails based on bad logic and spite. A British journalist about choked on his microphone when the seemingly intelligent general manager of an ethanol plant in Missouri started talking about how he could never vote for Obama because he’s scared and in Revelation 13 it says that an olive-skinned Muslim will trigger the Armageddon.

We don’t just look like a bunch of kooks. We are a bunch of kooks. I’d be willing to put up with Christians speaking out on the election if they displayed the slightest semblance of a biblical worldview and a marginal ability to exegete a Biblical text. But they don’t. The eschatology of someone who can find “an olive-skinned Muslim” in the Book of Revelation is that of a deluded moron.

Not only that, our Biblical rhetoric thinly veils a Republican partisanship that is downright idolatry. Bible-Thumpers across the spectrum reveled in the lurid missteps of Clinton. But when Bush showed the militancy of a Caligula we were the first to bow before his throne and overlook war crimes, trampling of civil rights and the most disgusting waste of America’s bounty on bombs rather than bread. We’re not a city on a hill. We’re temple prostitutes at the altars of materialism and neo-imperialism.

Yes, these Christians have drifted quite far from the message of the Galilean peasant who preached Love God, Love Neighbor, Help the Poor. All the rest is commentary.

About Me

I have a Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University. I am a visiting assistant professor at Illinois College. I have also taught at the University of Mississippi, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Columbia University. My research focuses on the New Testament and emergent Christian interactions with ancient Judaism in their Greco-Roman and ancient Near Eastern environments.